Diddy Kong

Overview

Diddy Kong is a character, created by Rare, for the hit SNES game Donkey Kong Country, where he took the role as Donkey Kong’s friend and sidekick. After losing their banana horde to the vile Kremlings, headed up by King K. Rool, both Diddy and Donkey went on an adventure across DK Island to reclaim their treasure. In his games, Diddy can be viewed as the equivalent to Luigi from the Mario franchise- less powerful than the main protagonist Donkey, but a faster and more flexible character in terms of movement. He always wear a red Nintendo hat because the DK series is published by the same company.

During the development of Donkey Kong Country, the character that would eventually become Diddy was actually a re-imagining of Donkey Kong Jr. The change came about when Nintendo opposed this redesign of an established icon; Rare decided to add a new monkey to the franchise, rather than start over. Some of the names considered for Diddy included Diet DK, DK Lite and Titchy Kong.

Since the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy, Diddy has gone on to star in many other games, as either a cameo or one of the main characters; the most iconic of which would be Rare’s Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64 in 1997 and its DS sequel, Diddy Kong Racing DS. In these two games, Diddy had a whole new franchise created around him; also featuring the debut of other important characters, such as Banjo and Conker. Diddy also had a main role to play in Donkey Kong 64 in 1999, the spiritual sequel to the Country series, alongside Donkey Kong and company.

After Microsoft’s takeover of Rare in 2002, Diddy Kong has been used in games by Nintendo and its companies, such as Mario Golf, Party, Kart and Baseball. He was the only western designed character to be playable in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. His original series, the Country games, have also been resurrected by Nintendo and Rare on the Game Boy Advance. In 2010, the Wii game Donkey Kong Country Returns came out and Diddy helps his partner by defeating the Tiki Tak Tribe.